Page 6 of Lord Ashley's Beautiful Alibi
Carlton gave a tolerant sigh. “I did, ma’am. He promised to be prompt.”
She swung to face three of the four men she’d invited to her office. All were seated before her massive mahogany desk, filling up her company’s offices with their celebrated good looks, their imperioussavoir faire, and their chuckles. She gave them what they called her evil eye. “You are not permitted to giggle.”
The three cleared their throats and attempted to appear somber.
“Ashley is not now a man of leisure, ma’am.” The dashing, dark-haired Godfrey DuClare, Lord Ramsey, regarded her with feigned conviction. “He’s too oppressed with details of his new responsibilities to be anywhere on time.”
“Come now, Ram.” Scarlett was having none of their excuses for their colleague. “I had hopes of his reform, at least in this! But the new Earl of Ashley has not been on time to anything in his life.”
“A month late being born, too,” added Fournier with the assurance of one who was not only Ashley’s older cousin, but also one who caroused with him. “I saw him last night at White’s. He returned home early.”
“For an appointment?” asked the third gentleman, Yves Pelletier, with a twinkle in his dark eyes. “I understand he has given up frivolous things.”
“He did. Long ago. Now he has all the business to take care of,” Fournier put in. “The deaths of his father and two brotherswithin the past year have been a shock. Now he has the whole burden he was never prepared to assume.”
Scarlett hated to look indifferent, but her attitude kept these men in line. “For the next few years, he will have to do it from afar, Fournier.”
“Years? Surely not!”
Scarlett gave him a withering glance.
Fournier grinned and sat taller in his chair. “This is no review? All of us are on assignment?”
“All of you are on assignment together. Do you have your stories ready for anyone in town?”
“As ever, yes, ma’am, I planned only to be away to my hunting box.” He winked at her, his hazel eyes as appealing as any dashing devil’s.
Scarlett chuckled at how Fournier, like the others, was so debonair. “Scoundrel,” she teased him. “It’s a marvel none of your ladybirds has managed to catch you in her nest.”
“Most of my ‘ladies’ are figments of my imagination,” Fournier said with a meaningful stare into her eyes. “Well you know it.”
She glanced away, brushing him off as she always did. Dirk Fournier, a French-English-German mongrel in possession of an old, rich barony in Kent, had tried for years to tempt her to his charms, but she’d eluded him. The sensuality of Dirk’s white-blond hair and rugged complexion could appeal to some. To her, too, in truth, he had, but she’d never succumb. He worked for her, for one thing. Second, the affair Scarlett craved would come one fine day from another sort of man. A patient creature who knew how to charm her and keep her enthralled. If, indeed, such a man walked the earth.
Pelletier sighed. “I am eager to meet your favored man, Miss Hawthorne.”
“He will meet your standards,monsieur,” she assured him with the hint of a smile.
“You will like Kane, Pelletier.” Ramsey leaned toward the Frenchman who’d become a part of their London team only four months ago. But Kane had been in Dover, Ostend, or Amsterdam all that time. Scarlett had told them that as cover for Kane’s activities there. “He is the smoothest infiltrator—”
“Smooth but always—” began Scarlett.
The door to her inner office burst open and bounced against the wall.
Scarlett stared at the swarthy, towering figure of the man she sought. “—late.”
Chapter Two
“Ah.” Kane wincedin rueful apology and understood immediately by their impudent gazes that he was the topic of conversation. “I heard you intoning my name.”
“Where’ve you been?” asked Ramsey, more curious than irritated.
“I have things to do, old man,” said Ramsey as he held up his own pocket watch and snapped shut the case.
“One day you’ll be on time,” Scarlett groused, and indicated the empty chair before her.
“I know, I know. To my funeral.” With a dose of his most dashing grin and flourish of his hand, Kane brushed off the criticism. He strode into the room with Scarlett’s one-eyed guard dog Todd Carlton glaring at him. Yanking off his leather gloves, Kane shrugged from his greatcoat and flung it over the offered chair. “My apologies. Devil of a storm. My carriage kept slipping in the sleet. Need new wheels.”Can’t afford them.“I am truly sorry, ma’am. I promise to reform. My apologies to you gentlemen, too.”
His three colleagues offered up varying degrees of skepticism.
